


i'll be fine once i get it

by annabeehive



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, don't mind me just reliving my first year of college, much female bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:40:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24815473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeehive/pseuds/annabeehive
Summary: Calypso's just trying to adjust to her first year of college, have fun with her new friends, and not fall in love.
Relationships: Calypso/Percy Jackson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	i'll be fine once i get it

Calypso leaned against the wall holding her tray, trying to look casual but exceedingly aware of everyone staring at her. Or, maybe not everyone, but _anyone_. She didn’t know any of these people, and they didn’t know her. She looked at the other students milling around the dining hall, and wondered what they thought of her when they saw the braid that she spent way too long trying to look artfully messy, and the white dress that she was absolutely convinced was way too fancy now.

Not that she wasn’t looking, either. It was hard to see this sea of strangers and not wonder who would end up being her friend by the end of the year. Or something else, she supposed, looking at a tall dark-haired guy waiting by the ice cream machine. Calypso let herself linger a little on his broad shoulders, suddenly imagining walking across campus nestled under his arm. A blonde girl with curls down to her waist walked over and hugged him from behind. Calypso looked away, blushing a little bit at how quickly she had gotten caught up in a fantasy about a total stranger.

She looked away from the ice cream bar, and she let out a little exhale of relief, spotting her roommate walking with a couple of other girls from the buffet area.

“Hey, Zoë,” she called, trying to fall into step with the little group. Zoë looked around and smiled at Calypso in recognition.

“Hey, Cal! How was the club fair?” Calypso barely managed not to drop her tray as the group rounded a corner towards the sitting area.

“Uh, it was pretty fun? The choir auditions are next week and there’s a club where I’m pretty sure they just hike on the weekends so I might go to that interest meeting if you’re interested. How was the career center info session?”

“Oh, it kind of sucked because the leader of the session was this dude who was such an asshole. But complaining about him led me to these ladies. This is Thalia, Bianca, and Phoebe.” The three girls stopped arguing amongst themselves and waved at Calypso.

Finally, they found a table with enough empty seats. Thalia put her tray next to Calypso’s and turned to her. “So. Let’s get this over with. Life story: go.”

All the girls looked at her and it suddenly felt like she was on a game show; the timer was running out. “Uh, well I’m from Wyoming—don’t bother asking the town you’ve never heard of it. I was homeschooled by my dad, no mom or siblings. I don’t know what I’m majoring in at all and uh, I miss my garden?”

“Bull _shit_ you miss your garden!” Zoë threw her arm around Calypso’s shoulder. “This girl must have at least a dozen different plants in our room right now.”

Bianca smiled from across the table. “That’s so awesome you can garden. I can’t keep anything alive. My little brother jokes I have the touch of death.”

“Oh could you give me a little hug before classes start then?” Phoebe held out her arms and Bianca pushed her backwards. Phoebe recoiled like she’d been shot, and collapsed onto the ground, twitching just a little bit. They were all laughing, and Phoebe took a little bow when she finally got back up.

The people at the neighboring table started laughing too. Calypso glanced over and found herself making direct eye contact with the cute guy from the buffet line. He smiled at her, and Calypso blushed and turned back to her table, where Thalia and Zoë were having a spirited debate to determine if Bianca was laughing or choking.

* * *

Calypso was pretty sure forcing non-STEM kids to take biology should be against the Geneva convention. Her list of problems to text Phoebe about was growing embarrassingly faster than the list of problems she’d solved. And it was only a month in. She shoved her notebook to the end of the bed and leaned on Bianca’s stomach, pouting. Bianca rolled her eyes and moved her arm so she could type around her.

“You sure your roommate doesn’t mind us being in here?” Thalia waved Calypso off from her desk, not looking up from her reading.

“Nah, I told you; Annabeth’s chill. Plus, it’s not like she’s ever in the room during the day. Some people from her high school go here and she spends, like, all her time with them.”

“Is she like, weird?”

“Nah, I actually think she’d get along with us really well. I’ve been trying to get her to come out with us, but she keeps saying she has plans.”

Calypso looked across at the other side of the room, trying to guess what its owner could be like. It was pretty spare, especially compared to Thalia’s explosion of band posters and art prints and knick-knacks what Thalia affectionately referred to as “Random crap! Everybody needs random crap on their shelves!”

There were a few photos taped up above her bed. A few different generic-looking city skylines next to her desk. A Yankees cap on top of the dresser. Her desk was the only thing that looked lived in. Old coffee mugs sat abandoned on top of piles of diagrams. Piles of books stacked precariously on the floor, next to chewed up pencils seemingly dropped and forgotten in the middle of an idea.

The disorganization kind of made Calypso twitch. She was debating the creepiness of at least picking the pencils off the floor when the door started to unlock.

After a few clicks, Annabeth burst through the door, three books in one arm, and balancing a coffee cup in the other, and a pen gripped between her teeth. She dropped the books unceremoniously on the floor. The coffee cup tilted dangerously as she tried to free her key from the lock, her backpack falling halfway off her shoulders by now. 

“Speak of the devil,” Thalia greeted airily.

Annabeth spit the pen onto the floor and placed her coffee cup on the dresser. “You were talking about me?” The door slammed shut and Annabeth tossed her backpack on her bed. She turned around, and started when she finally noticed the two girls on Thalia’s bed. “Oh. Hi.”

Thalia finally turned around in her chair. “Ayy I told you guys she existed! Annabeth, this is Calypso,” Calypso sat up from Bianca’s lap and waved, “and Bianca.” Bianca looked up from her code, nodded, and went back to typing.

“Nice to meet you,” Annabeth said overly politely, rolling her eyes at Thalia. She undid her bun, and her hair fell in long curls almost down to her waist. She grabbed a brush, and started roughly brushing her hair. Calypso winced at the sound of knots tearing. 

“Hey, a bunch of us were planning on going to an open mic night at Hal’s tonight. Wanna come with?” Thalia sounded casual, like she had made this kind of request before.

Annabeth turned back to face her, still working through a stubborn knot. “Actually, my friend Rachel’s performing. Percy and I were planning on stopping by.” She frowned as a pencil fell out of the back of her hair.

“We should all go together!” Calypso smiled, trying to sound friendly.

Annabeth bit her lip, and glanced at Thalia, who nodded encouragingly. “Sure, why not?”

* * *

Calypso played with the hem of her crop top. “Are you sure this isn’t too short?”

“Calm down, you look hot.” Calypso scoffed. Zoë lounged in her bed, somehow making jeans and a t-shirt look like an outfit.

“I don’t know maybe I should change,” she said, turning to her side.

“I swear to all of the gods, if you change one more time I will kill you.”

Calypso put her hair down and mussed it up in the mirror, before changing her mind and braiding it again. “You look beautiful! Now come on, Thalia and everyone are probably already downstairs waiting.”

“One second.” Calypso grabbed her key off her desk and put it in her pocket. “I’m ready.”

They walked out together, down the stairwell the one flight to Thalia and Annabeth’s room. Zoë knocked, and Thalia opened the door. “Hey guys, I was about to text; everyone else is already here.”

Zoë walked in, and Calypso followed. “This is Zoë, and Percy, you haven’t met Calypso yet.”

“Hey.” Calypso did a little wave, and then stopped. The guy—Percy—with his arm around Annabeth’s shoulder was the cute guy from the first day. How small was this campus? So Annabeth was the girlfriend she had seen. Ah. Cool.

“Nice to meet you,” Percy did a little salute with his free hand.

Thalia clapped her hands. “Alright, that’s enough. Come along children, let’s go!”

* * *

Hal’s was a coffeeshop on the other side of campus from the freshman dorms. Calypso let herself drift a bit behind the group. The buildings were absolutely beautiful in the sunset. It was still August, and the breeze was warm, and the leaves on the trees were green, and sometimes she couldn’t actually believe that she was here. That this got to be her home, that this life got to be hers.

Calypso snapped out of her reverie, realizing that Percy had fallen back to walk next to her. She blushed a little, remembering her stupid fantasy when she had first seen him.

“Hey, are you in my bio lecture?”

“Uh, it depends. Is your bio lecture at 10:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

“Yeah! 152, with Dodds, right?” Calypso nodded. “Yeah, I thought that was you. I noticed your braid on the first day, with the gold in it? It was really pretty.”

“Oh, um, thanks,” Calypso mumbled, trying not to be so aware that someone else’s boyfriend was standing so close to her. She cleared her throat. “So, you and Annabeth met in high school?”

“Before that, actually. She moved to New York in sixth grade, and we actually hated each other for a few months. But I managed to win her over eventually, thanks to my dazzling charm. And then in high school, the both of us met Rachel, who we’re going to see now.”

“It must be nice being together on the same campus.”

“Yeah we all got pretty lucky…did anyone else from your high school end up here?”

“Oh no, I was homeschooled.” Percy started to make an expression that was getting pretty familiar. That mixture of curious and impressed and trying-to-figure-out-what’s-wrong-with-you. She answered his questions before he could ask. “My dad and I lived out in the middle of nowhere so he could run a clinic, but the school system was kind of shit. He taught me what he knew through middle school, and then I had a tutor online.”

“Just you and your dad, then?”

“Yeah. Always has been.”

“Nice.” Percy froze for a second. “I mean, um, me too. It’s always been just me and my mom. And my step-dad too, now, I guess. He didn’t show up until high school.”

“Huh.” They walked in silence for a minute. Percy kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. Before he could kick it again, Calypso ran a bit in front of him to kick it.

Calypso laughed, and Percy smiled back. It was kind of unfair how cute he was.

“C’mon, we should catch up; they’re like a block ahead of us at this point.”

* * *

Rachel’s performance was…interesting. She wasn’t bad, but Calypso wasn’t the best appreciator of slam poetry. From glances at Percy and Annabeth, they felt the same, but they clapped and cheered along with the rest of the crew when it was time.

After she was done, Rachel came over to the back of the coffeehouse where they had managed to snag a few couches. “You guys came!” She gave a little hug to Annabeth and Percy. They made an odd little group, Percy and Annabeth in their preppy-yet-nondescript, and Rachel with her paint-stained overalls clashing wonderfully with giant pink sunglasses and a line of rainbow barrettes.

“You were awesome up there.” Percy stood up and turned around so he could hug her properly.  
  
“So gracious of you to pretend like you weren’t bored out of your mind, Percy. Now who are all these people? Don’t tell me you’ve made _other friends_.” Rachel pushed him aside and gasped dramatically.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “You already know Thalia, and she brought some friends of hers along.”

Rachel smiled through all the introductions, and sat down. They all started joking around pretty quickly. Thalia was right; Annabeth actually fit in pretty well with the rest of them.

It turned out Rachel, Zoë, and Phoebe had been at the same interest meeting for drama club the previous week, and Rachel’s imitation of the club leader had the rest of them laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Bianca snorted coffee through her nose, which got everyone going.

After a few hours, Calypso saw the baristas eyeing their corner and cleaning up, and she motioned to the rest of them.

As they all got ready to leave, Percy walked over to Calypso. “Hey, I was thinking we should exchange numbers? Like, if you ever want to study for bio together or get together or something?”

“Yeah, that would be cool.” Calypso motioned for him to hand over his phone, and she put her number in. He took it back and slipped it into his pocket.

“I’ll text you later, and we can plan something out.” Calypso nodded. Percy nodded back, satisfied, and then did a little run to catch up with Annabeth and Rachel. Calypso watched them walk out, and then started to walk alongside Zoë and Bianca. Her phone buzzed.

 **Unknown number:** i work at the library most days but im off wensdays if that works for u

 **Unknown number:** this is percy btw 🐬✨

 **me:** meet at my dorm at like 2-ish?

 **Percy:** sounds good!


End file.
